Hello, my garden!

I woke up at five, but since the sun won't rise before six, I chose to take my cue from the sun - and grabbed mippies passing by for cuddles.

They were quite excited to get out early and had a lovely stroll and explore! I found Lady - as usual - in the tree and Mewthos mewled for attention going on and on and on and on. I picked him up at least a dozen times already, he still jumped onto my back when I was pulling weeds and started to settle down on my back! Hello? That's not going to work, my boy!

So, I didn't get to work on the thorns, instead I cleared more of that tall grass stuff. There are loads and loads of these succulents with the red flowers everywhere, and between them grows that horrid thin grass, which grows long and longer but not upright, making it very difficult to find the plant to cut it. I filled at least another wheelbarrow and uncovered another sprinkler as well as another spekboom.

I worked under the Wag-n-bietjie, which hindered me every chance it got! One time, it pulled out my hair ribbon. It's also dropped a lot of thorny bits onto the ground, and I've bled quite a bit today.

As I was working, I kept trying to figure out what I should do with my climbing and large plants - I would like to build something myself, and I'd like it to be nice; I don't think I'm ready, yet. Plaster won't work, since plaster can't get wet. I'm not up to building with cement, quite yet, and I also don't want to invest a lot of money, at the moment - since I'm still recovering from the move. And that leaves only plastic. I don't like plastic. Sigh. I've had a look online, and I can't seem to find plastic pots large enough to hold tomato plants - not fully grown ones, anyway.

Which brings me back to my initial thinking, i.e. square one: do the best I can afford, and if the plants can't grow to their full potential, that's good enough - for now. Let's be real here: I've only been here two months, and in that time I've achieved really a lot! But Rome wasn't built in a day and I have a long way to go, before I have everything in place that is needed for growing vegetables continuously and copiously. If I can get just enough to keep me going, that's all I wanted, for now, anyway!

It's two in the afternoon and I took another close look at my pots - and more vegetables are sprouting! The tomatoes are finally poking through, and I have a few Butternuts showing their first leaves! And I think the first Pea in saying hello!

I just spent two hours selecting and editing photo's, it'll take me at least another hour to upload and caption them ... I hope you'll appreciate this months photo-episode :)

Well, I've fried myself a rump steak - although I'm sorry to say, I'm not enjoying it very much. It tastes fine, I just don't seem to feel like eating today.

I've been keeping my seed spreadsheet updated, capturing which seed poked it's first sprout on which day. My herbs don't seem too enthusiastic, yet, nor the lettuce. No pressure! I'll be using the spreadsheet to work out how may pots of what size I need - I'll try to pop in to Builders again on Tuesday, at lunchtime, though; I'm not doing this after hour traffic to myself again! I've decided I'll get a collection of the biggest plastic pot they have and make a plan with those. Oh, I've also set myself a budget - but first, I need to look at how many I really need and then maybe re-evaluate. I'll also need bags and bags of potting soil to fill those pots! The pots outside used up almost three bags alone - and that excludes the herb pot, where I used the 'special' potting soil, supposedly ideal for herbs.

Mippies have come in - Janey, as always, needing an extra invitation. They cleaned out their bowls completely - twice! So I gave them a third sachet. A moth flew into the lounge and it's driving the mippies crazy - Mewthos is mewling at it in frustration, which frustrates me!

It's ten to eight, and, even though I took a nap at noon, I'm ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow it's house work! Laundry, dishes, and such fun stuff. I can't really do any gardening anyway, since I've quite buggered up my right index finger - it's got a blister and a thorn. I think the tip of the thorn is still in there, I'll have to look at it tomorrow in daylight.